DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Firebird vs. RethinkDB vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Firebird vs. RethinkDB vs. TimescaleDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Cloud-hosted realtime document store. iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data.

Firebird is an open source RDBMS forked from Borland's InterBase

DBMS for the Web with a mechanism to push updated query results to applications in realtime.

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	13.64
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	20.50
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	2.66
Rank	#107	Overall
	#20	Document stores

Score	4.46
Rank	#71	Overall
	#5	Time Series DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.firebirdsql.org

rethinkdb.com

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

rethinkdb.com/docs

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Firebird Foundation

The Linux Foundation

since July 2017

Timescale

Initial release

2012

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2009

2017

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

2.4.1, August 2020

2.15.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, binary, float, bool, date, geometry

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

community-supported driver
C#

community-supported driver
C++

community-supported driver
Clojure

community-supported driver
Dart

community-supported driver
Erlang

community-supported driver
Go

community-supported driver
Haskell

community-supported driver
Java

official driver
JavaScript (Node.js)

official driver
Lisp

community-supported driver
Lua

community-supported driver
Objective-C

community-supported driver
Perl

community-supported driver
PHP

community-supported driver
Python

official driver
Ruby

official driver
Scala

community-supported driver

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

PSQL

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Client-side triggers through changefeeds

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

range based

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

yes

ACID

Atomic single-document operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Features a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writers

yes

MVCC based

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

yes

users and table-level permissions

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

Cloud-based DBMS's popularity grows at high rates
12 December 2019, Paul Andlinger

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Meet some database management systems you are likely to hear more about in the future
4 August 2014, Paul Andlinger

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Recent citations in the news

Realtime vs Cloud Firestore: Which Firebase Database to go?
8 March 2024, Appinventiv

Atos cybersecurity blog: Misconfigured Firebase: A real-time cyber threat
18 January 2024, Atos

Don't be like these 900+ websites and expose millions of passwords via Firebase
18 March 2024, The Register

Google launches Firebase Genkit, a new open source framework for building AI-powered apps
14 May 2024, TechCrunch

Hundreds of Google Firebase websites might have leaked data online
19 March 2024, TechRadar

provided by Google News

DoNot Team's New Firebird Backdoor Hits Pakistan and Afghanistan
23 October 2023, The Hacker News

12 Top Open Source Databases to Consider
1 May 2024, TechTarget

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9 August 2023, Open Source For You

Albany Firebirds single-game tickets on sale Friday
29 February 2024, Troy Record

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23 July 2023, MarkTechPost

provided by Google News

An introduction to building realtime apps with RethinkDB
9 July 2022, devmio

How to Use RethinkDB with Node.js Applications — SitePoint
16 December 2015, SitePoint

Stripe acquires team behind NoSQL database startup RethinkDB
5 October 2016, VentureBeat

RethinkDB is dead, and MongoDB isn't what killed it
24 January 2017, TechRepublic

Open Source Horizon Claims Edge over Google's Firebase Mobile Back-End -- ADTmag
23 May 2016, ADT Magazine

provided by Google News

TimescaleDB Is a Vector Database Now, Too
25 September 2023, Datanami

Timescale Acquires PopSQL to Bring a Modern, Collaborative SQL GUI to PostgreSQL Developers
4 April 2024, PR Newswire

Power IoT and time-series workloads with TimescaleDB for Azure Database for PostgreSQL
18 March 2019, Microsoft

Timescale Valuation Rockets to Over $1B with $110M Round, Marking the Explosive Rise of Time-Series Data
22 February 2022, Business Wire

TimescaleDB goes distributed; implements ‘Chunking’ over ‘Sharding’ for scaling-out
22 August 2019, Packt Hub

provided by Google News

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